May 28, 2009
Texas Board of Education chairman Don McLeroy's nomination to continue in that capacity was just rejected by the Texas Senate.
For all the gory details, check out TFN's liveblog. The vote was 19-11 in favor, and requires 2/3 for approval. The Senate President briefly had trouble with the math,…
May 27, 2009
Ned Ryun, son of former Olympic miler and stumbleprone former Congressman Jim Ryun, is worried about Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court.
How worried? "I have a sneaking suspicion," he writes, "that she has a different view of the Constitution…
May 26, 2009
The California Supreme Court upheld the legality of last year's ballot initiative writing discrimination into the Constitution. No one can marry a same sex couple now, but they didn't invalidate marriages performed in the window between a previous ruling permitting same sex marriages and the…
May 22, 2009
George W. Bush, addressing the graduating class of Artesia High School, says:
I no longer feel that great sense of responsibility that I had when I was in the Oval Office. And frankly, it’s a liberating feeling.
For us as well.
May 21, 2009
There are those who say "Not only does the NCSE not criticize religion, but it cuddles up to it, kisses it, and tells it that everything will be all right." There are others who say:
The continuum [between creationism and evolution] as described on the NCSE site strongly implies that “atheist…
May 21, 2009
Reluctant as I am to endorse anything on America's Shittiest Website™, this article should be required reading for any politically active atheist. It's written as advice for social conservatives/political evangelicals, but for reasons which have implications I won't get into, it applies equally…
May 20, 2009
Governor Mark Sanford, for those keeping track of such things, is one of the few governors to refuse federal stimulus funds, specifically rejecting funding that would allow him to avoid laying off hundreds of teachers.
In a discussion with batshit insane conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck, Sanford…
May 20, 2009
My article for Seed about what the new Texas standards mean for science education nationwide is now online! Check it out.
Here's a taste:
Given these stakes, my colleagues and I worked hard to influence the Texas School Board over the months of hearings, providing them with a statement signed by…
May 20, 2009
Scientists generally advocate for openness. Full disclosure of methods is vital to peer review and to reproducibility or even evaluation of experimental results. Scientists are also pushing hard for a new publishing system which doesn't hide research behind copyright walls. The community of…
May 20, 2009
As an addendum to last week's post about the California budget propositions, let me say that I voted for 1B (raising school funds if 1A passes) and against the rest.
I am apparently not alone, as it appears all but 1F (legislator pay caps) failed. The chair of the Assembly Budget Committee told…
May 19, 2009
Who just said:
You know it’s real. You can see it, and you can feel it. This change, my friends, is being delivered in a teabag. And that’s a wonderful thing.
Was it:
Teabagging aficionado Neal Pollack?
Sex advice columnist and teabagging expert Dan Savage?
Or chairman of the Republican Party,…
May 13, 2009
In his inaugural address, President Obama promised to "restore science to its rightful place." What exactly that place was became a subject of much discussion in the blogs, and we learned more on March 9, 2009, when the President issued a memorandum ordering agency heads to develop policies, under…
May 12, 2009
Calitics is pretty excited. Polling, most recently from SurveyUSA, shows that a series of amendments meant to solve this year's California budget crisis are likely to fail. All get less than 50% support, with only one seeing less than 50% opposition (and a lot of undecideds, obviously).
In the…
May 11, 2009
Shorter Bruce Chapman:
Have you ever noticed that critics of the "war on science" don't criticize animal rights terrorists? Also, why don't proponents of a "war on poverty" cheer Jack the Ripper's contributions to the effort?
For what it's worth, actual Bruce Chapman:
Where are the protests…
May 8, 2009
Roger Pielke, Jr. is a respected scholar of science policy, but he's got a contrarian streak a mile wide that gets him into trouble occasionally, as for instance his feud with Joe Romm of Climate Progress. It is also apparent in his survey of a fight over oyster farming off the coast of Point…
May 7, 2009
Martin Cothran takes a break from defending Pat Buchanan's anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial to pick a fight over the definition of the Holocaust. All you need to know is that the definition employed by Yad Vashem, the Anti-Defamation League, historians at the Holocaust History Project, and…
May 6, 2009
It's said that cockroaches would survive a nuclear war, but can they withstand scientists who understand evolution? A new study finds that evolution-based Integrative Pest Management was more effective than conventional treatments at killing cockroaches in North Carolina schools.
This is good news…
May 6, 2009
I generally agree with Kevin Drum, but he periodically says things that make me think he lives in an alternative universe. For instance, here's what he thinks would happen if we implemented recommendations of a commission to "save" Social Security:
Even Republicans agree that privatization is off…
May 5, 2009
I've been curious how close Disco. Inst. blogger and Focus on the Family stooge Martin Cothran would get to defending Holocaust denial in the abstract, rather than defending the Holocaust denial of Pat Buchanan specifically. In comments at his blog, Cothran inches closer. I observed that:
You say…
May 4, 2009
I grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey, and I'm thrilled to see that two kids from our county seat wrote winning essays in the Alliance for Science essay contest. Teacher Carol Zepatos of the Bergen County Academies is clearly doing something right. All of the winning essays are spectacular, of…
May 4, 2009
Kansas Jackass reports that newly installed Governor Parkinson will allow a coal plant in Holcomb:
At a just concluded press conference, Governor Mark Parkinson announced he has reached an agreement with Sunflower Electric Power Corporation that will allow for the construction of a brand new…
May 1, 2009
If Martin Cothran is to be believed (and naturally he isn't):
The paleocons, almost as a matter of definition, opposed the war [in Iraq], and opposed it harshly.
I opposed the war in Iraq, and opposed it harshly, so "almost as a matter of definition," I'm a almost paleocon, just like Pat Buchanan,…
April 30, 2009
Freedom Singer and civil rights icon Bernice Johnson Reagon:
If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition.
Relevant, I think, to the kerfuffle over evolution/religion accomodationism.
Also relevant to note that most scientists are not incompatibilists…
April 30, 2009
Both the mammalogist and the political junkie in me wish we could see this:
rumors are flying like monkeys and squirrels, which, of course, clouds the issue
A literal cloud of flying monkeys and squirrels would be quite a sight.
April 30, 2009
In attacking the Obama administration's response to the swine flu outbreak, "Brownie" reveals more about the past administration than the current one:
I think they want to raise this level because that gives them more attention, it gives them more, you know, more legitimacy, and allows them to get…
April 29, 2009
Shorter every conservative everywhere (RNC Chairman Michael Steele or disgraced former Representative Jim Ryun's sons or Martin Cothran, for instance):
Arlen Specter, pfft. The Republican Party needs to abandon Ronald Reagan's Big Tent approach so that Republicans can have more leaders like…
April 28, 2009
There's a kerfuffle under way in which Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, Richard Hoppe, and a host of others are debating whether NCSE is too nice to theists. Since I work for NCSE, I'm trying to stay out of this, and my comments about NCSE will be based on publicly available information, not any internal…
April 28, 2009
Ending obstructions thrown up by wingnuts who think that abortion is more important than a global pandemic, the U.S. Senate confirmed Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Sebelius has resigned as Governor of Kansas and is moving into her office. Lieutenant Governor Mark…
April 27, 2009
Steve Benen observes that the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees our response to pandemics like swine flu, is currently without its Secretary. Governor Kathleen Sebelius, whose own state had some of the first cases of swine flu in the US, is waiting for Senate confirmation.…
April 27, 2009
Martin Cothran's difficulties with basic reading comprehension continue.
I'm putting most of this response below the fold, because sometimes someone on the internet is just wrong. All you need to know about Cothran's commitment to the truth is this reply to my claim that "I find [William F.]…
